Editor’s Note: Ever been asked to do something for free by your friends? I know I have. Marlena is no different.

But instead of being bitter about it, she saw this as an opportunity – so she did what any potential-entrepreneur would do. She started a business to solve that problem.

And she did it all as a single mother. Now her business might just help her repay her student debt. Here’s her inspiring story.

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I’m doing a Bachelor of Commerce with a Business Law major through Curtin. As I’m a mature age student, I do this online rather than attending lectures. This allows me to have a full time job and be an active, participating, tax paying member of society.

I’m currently temping as an accounts payable officer for a corporation of reasonable size. The average person starts yawning when I mention I’m an accountant, but my job is actually a lot of fun. Reason being, I get to hustle on a daily basis!

Within this corporation there are many policies and procedures and different layers of management with different levels of authority. This applies to my role to the dollar figure of the invoice I need approved for payment. As with many corporations with many management layers, decision making is slow. I don’t have time for that!

I use my social skills, charm and networking skills to get approvals fast. I get suppliers contacting me on a daily basis about overdue invoices, which may be as little as $100 or as much as $250k. As a hustler in the workplace, I make sure once I’ve get my hands on something, it actually gets done!

Obviously I could purely use this for professional purposes, but sometimes we need a little help ourselves. I knew I had an end of study period assignment coming up, and I hadn’t even looked at it until four days before I was due. It was on business communications; I had to write a business report AND include a survey.

As soon as I got home I quickly put a two page survey together and at work printed a decent stack of these. Within 24 hours I had 30 respondents to the survey, ranging from administrators to general managers to even the CFO. Had I not hustled the input of my colleagues in a positive and entertaining way, I would never have been able to achieve this.

At home I analysed the figures, put some pretty graphs together, wrote a few explanatory sentences, an executive summary and whatever else to meet the requirements of the business report assignment, and managed to submit the whole thing a day early! I just checked my grades and scored 81.5%. Not too bad for something I didn’t spend too much time on.

In regards to having entrepreneurial interests, I’ve graduated as an accountant from TAFE (adv dip) in 2012. Ever since, I’m always getting asked by friends about tax returns. Taxation law being an exciting topic in my studies (you can directly apply the knowledge onto your own return, and if it means I get a greater return, I’m interested!), I’m happy to give advice… but not for free.

I’ve spent three years studying to be able to call myself an accountant, I now tell friends I’m happy to help, but I’ll invoice them through my own business. I’ve got an ABN, operate as a sole trader, and four months a year have a bit of extra cash in my pocket from helping friends with their returns.

Ideally, upon completing my studies I would like to build my business into something bigger. Taxation law provides a decent income when done right, but the real money is in international taxation. Needless to say, I’m excited about the prospects of taking that elective unit with my degree later this year.

As I am currently eight months pregnant, however, and facing life as a single parent, I’m going to be dependent on Centrelink payments. As an immigrant, I can’t access HECS; therefore, paying for my degree is going to be a massive challenge. I thoroughly enjoy studying and have graduated TAFE five times to get maximum credits at uni and reduce the cost of my degree.

I have only eight subjects to go and am so close to realising my dream. I don’t want to face the future as a dole bludging single parent, which is the label society seems to put on single mothers who stay at home. I want to finish my degree, and obviously a cash injection towards my uni fees and books would really help me out.

I don’t get paid much in my current job and am aware that, although discrimination against pregnant women is against the law, no company is going to hire someone who is very obviously pregnant. This is why I stayed in my current job. I currently have no savings, and without any type of scholarship it would take me years to finish my degree purely because of financial constraints.

So, rather than being a victim of my situation, I’m asking you to help me with my fees. I might even come and help you with your tax return one day!